My diary here does not indulge in the events occurring in Ukraine per se, just the reporting of it. I'm sure, as with the people of Palestine and elsewhere, that we support the right of self-rule, self-determination, and self-defense, and that these matters are not easily settled between conflicting parties and interpretation, just as we honor the age-old Olympic truce to suspend hostilities during the Games.
No, this diary is about our media, and medias, concentrated in few hands, ever fewer despite the so-called internet revolution, and clearly how, before anything, the "mainsteam" media serves the purposes of propaganda.
Yes, everywhere you look, Ukraine is the biggest news of the day(s), another struggle between extremist elements in a land we have little ties with, or understanding, but that some among us would insist deserves our influence, control and intervention, despite the elements we would need to ally with that are profoundly against our reason for being and values.
This is not our battle, and one should question seriously why this happened during the Olympics, a matter of great dishonor. Whoever is responsible, should think clearly about the precedent, another precedent in a growing age of war and corruption, unchecked by (classical or modern) liberal restraint, respect of balances, or balances of power. To listen to our media however, this Ukraine business is a matter of utmost importance, despite however far removed it is from mainstream American interests.
Why is that, we must ask? Because interests of power have enthusiastically encouraged the coverage. Economic interests. There is little to no real regard here for human rights or city on the hill discussions, clearly the nationalist elements in Ukraine who initiated this violence do not respect this. They pay lip service, but the reality on the ground is a hell of a lot more complicated, and unfortunately I would guess we have integral involvement, even though we have no integral commitment in the outcome, which we likely cannot control.
We keep making the same mistakes over and over, not that somehow centralized economic management is going to make things better, which is the age-old mistake of the neo-classicalists (and state communists), but that somehow subjection to the centralized economic power mechanisms of the world is going to free people, a much stupider proposition (and provocatively, really the same neo-classicalist agenda). Within hours after the so-called revolution, we hear of salvation by IMF loans and guarantees, a sure path to prosperity and freedom :).
Some call it insanity to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results, the wiser among us know this as stupidity. Yet, as little as we hear about power struggles elsewhere, this one is on front stage. Mr. John himself is in dialogue with the radical right elements here just as he is in Syria, paradoxically spouting off the propaganda of freedom and Western liberalism. It's a sham.
This occurs though, in the sense of mainstream capture, despite the mainstream not really caring that much about it, no matter how hard the mainstream media tries to engender, because of the growing centralized ownership of media. We've argued against this trend, only to have the sophists claim that we have unlimited streams of distribution now, it's a golden age (no, again gilden), as if that matters if production is still centralized, and, adding insult to injury (and further injury to insult), our "do-gooder" government is recording and vacuuming up everything that is said through these distribution channels, thanks to the concentration of the very physical means of this distribution (as well as production), including innocuous home-cams of (truly grassroots) folks to folks - some would say for defense, others more aptly suggesting for blackmail and opportunistic advantage, and the sharpest among us realizing for all these reasons, because, as Obama suggested himself, "we can", and this somehow explains why we can't exercise the proper moral or mature constraint not to do it, whether or not it brings us dishonor, tramples on our values, and/or leads to division within the ranks.
1:18 PM PT: I should point out that "Mr. John" in this diary refers to John McCain, who I momentarily was perplexed about what exactly his last name was, so just chose Mr. John, not realizing this could suggest John Kerry as well, who I would hope is not talking to the same kind of elements that McCain indulges.